Erhard Milch

That Germany beat these countries was due to better planning and not better preparedness.

Erhard Milch (March 30, 1892 – January 25, 1972) was a German field marshal who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as part of the re-armament of Germany following World War I. Milch was sentenced to life imprisonment at Landsberg prison. His sentence was commuted to 15 years imprisonment in 1951, but he was released in June 1954. He lived out the remainder of his life at Düsseldorf, where he died in 1972.

That Germany beat these countries was due to better planning and not better preparedness.

To Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Let them try me. I shall have plenty to say about the Allies. I have some very good friends among the Americans and English, and the French industrialists, too. I have done nothing of which I am ashamed.

To Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

He is a shrewd, Napoleonic, short man, who is very affable, but as poisonous as hell with his affability.

Leon Goldensohn, January 22, 1946

It was true enough, he did not appear ashamed — merely worried about his own immunity from trial as a war criminal.

Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946

There is no reason to believe that Milch was not absolutely sincere in his idealistic belief in Imperial Germany. Its destruction, however, caused a fundamental change in him: idealism in Erhard Milch was extinguished forever. From this period on, Milch became more and more the slave of his own ruthless ambition.